Copper
by AstoriaGrace
Summary: (Mermaid!AU) Ginny has watched and waited for the green-eyed human for as long as she can remember... but that much desired place at his side is already taken by a girl with long, long legs. -Complete-


Copper

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 _A/N: Disclaimer- I don't own Harry Potter. This is a short story based off of a random writing prompt and incorporating a randomly selected word. (Mermaid!AU)_

 _Seventh Sanctum Random Writing Challenge: "The story must have some beads appear in the middle."_

 _Word To Use: "Foozle- verb tr., intr.: To botch or bungle"_

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Ginny stared through the clear water, her brown eyes focused on a large, blurry shape floating on the surface. Straining her ears, she could almost pick up on light sounds of laughter, accompanied by a deeper voice whispering words of affection. Her long lithe tail flicked, propelling her slightly higher in the greenish depths.

What would she give to be the one seated in that gently rocking boat above, with the green eyed human leaning against _her_ bosom? That much desired position, however, was taken by a very pretty, particularly leggy girl with long black hair. She smiled down into the glittering almond-shaped eyes of the young man resting against her, rubbing his shoulders lovingly as he yawned.

"This is fun, isn't it, Harry?" Her voice was soft, and sent shivers of disgust down the back of the girl floating prone beneath them. "Here, all alone on the ocean... with you."

"Not bad for just the first date then, Cho?" Harry Potter straightened up as his female companion giggled, searching in his pocket for the gift which he had been intending to give her all afternoon.

He fished the necklace from his coat, holding the string of gleaming copper beads out so that they gleamed enticingly under the July sun. The mermaid's brown eyes never left the object of her passion, never strayed from the boat where her love sat. For months, years even, she had watched the green-eyed, messy-haired man at his work on the trawlers. Though they had never spoken- indeed, Mr. Potter did not even know that such things as mermaids existed- the ginger girl fantasized that his heart was truly hers. Ginny's tail cut through the water as she drifted yet closer to the couple, the light from the cheep jewels casting rainbows about her. She wanted to speak to the man, to burst from her oceanic prison and embrace him- but she couldn't. He was a human and she, a mermaid. The two did not mix, for men would always favor women with legs; women like the athletic and effortlessly confident Cho Chang.

"Oh! Is that for me? You _shouldn't_ have!" Cho squealed, leaning forward to press her lips against Harry's. As they kissed, the copper necklace slipped from the man's relaxed hands, falling into the ocean waves with a slight _plip_. Cho broke apart from her boyfriend, and they both paired over the edge of their boat, their eyes following the trail of bubbles left by the sinking beads.

"I- I'm sorry, darling. I can't believe that I just dropped that- I'm such a butterfingers." Harry's voice sounded above Ginny as she waited with a pounding heart in the murky shadow of the small rowboat.

"It's fine-" Cho was saying, but Harry cut her off, his voice laden with playful regret.

"No, no. I'll buy you another one as soon as we get back to shore. Geez, that was supposed to be the everlasting symbol of our unearthly romance. Can't believe I foozled that up."

"What? 'Foozle'? That's not even a word!"

"It is! I promise- would I ever lie to you?"

Ginny flipped over, her waist-length scarlet hair billowing around her as she swam towards the ocean bottom. The gift from the man she loved might have been meant for another, but perhaps- just perhaps if she took it, some of that everlasting and unearthly love might belong to her.

Half-buried in sand, the string of copper beads were still gleaming, now with an eerily greenish light. Ginny's slender, milk-white fingers slipped around them, and she slung the bright rope of costume-jewelry over her neck, loving the way they floated just above her naked skin.

Harry Potter was already rowing the small boat back towards the rocky English shore, intent on replacing the lost present with an equally inexpensive trinket from the tiny coastal town where his girlfriend and he lived. Never in his wildest dreams would he have imagined that twenty yards below, a pale face with large brown eyes was gazing wistfully after the wake left by his craft, her golden and copper-colored tail swishing gently in the green-blue water.

* * *

"Wait! Wait up just a moment, Harry, I need to take off my shoes." Cho sat quickly down on a low, smooth grey rock and began unbuckling her blue sandals as her boyfriend waited, the coastal breeze whipping his already-tousled black hair. "I'm sorry!" She gasped, stringing the shoes over her shoulder and racing barefoot through the pebbly sand to his side.

"It's fine; we've got all the time in the world, my sweet." He smiled down at her, wrapping his arms around her slightly freckled shoulders as she rose to her tiptoes for a kiss.

The red-haired mermaid watched it all from her cloistered hiding place between two large, craggy rocks which led to the entrance of a tiny, empty cave. Months had passed since her acquisition of the copper beads, and Cho was now more than just a first date to Ginny's secret love- she was his fiance.

A pearly tear slipped from Ginny's large brown eyes as she turned her face from the happy pair, focusing instead on her own tail. Strong and beautiful, it's shimmering scales spiraled in every shade of autumn- oranges, browns, reds, and coppers- but the young creature held nothing for it but loathing. It was this thoroughly non-human appendage that kept her from Harry's very knowledge, that prevented her from ever finding love with the human of her dreams. None of the other merpeople meant anything to her- their ways were grotesque in her mind, especially when held in comparison of the land-dwellers.

Unrequited affection was eating a hole in her very soul, but she was unable to understand the damage.

On the beach, less than a dozen yards from the weeping mermaid, Harry and Cho spread an old, tattered blanket on the sand and settled down to watch the rolling grey waves, hand in hand.

"Harry?" The pretty woman turned to face her fiance, a sliver of concern appearing between her dark, almond-shaped eyes. "When- when we get married, will you wear a copper tie?"

Harry Potter laughed, pinching Cho's cheek slightly in jest. "Of course, love, whatever you please. But why do you look so worried? And why _copper,_ of all colors?"

The girl bowed her head, a tinge of slightly embarrassed pink spreading across her cheeks. "I- I was just thinking about the future. You know, when I lost my first boyfriend... Cedric... I just don't want to lose you either. And copper is sort of... _our_ color. You know, because of those beads that you gave me when we first started going out."

"And promptly dropped into the ocean, never to be found again? Yeah, I remember them. Of course I'll wear a copper tie for our wedding, darling. And I promise you that I'll never leave you. You won't lose me like you lost Cedric Diggory, I _promise_."

Cho Chang opened her mouth, about to protest that Cedric had been a fisherman just like Harry- that her fiance could get knocked into the ocean depths and drowned just as easily as her departed boyfriend, but stopped. Instead, she buried her face in Harry's chest closed her eyes, the sun shining on her dark locks as she drifted into a contented sleep.

Ginny fingered the copper necklace around her neck, torn between desiring the best for her forbidden love and angst over her own cursed existence. If it wasn't for her horrible tail it would be so easy to find happiness, she told herself, her grief-besot mind slowly beginning to fixate on that one idea.

Suddenly, in a fit of passion, she seized a jagged stone from the rubble of seaweed and coral strewn around her, and brought it down on her tail. The fiery scales bent and twisted as she pried them away, silvery-blue blood beginning to leak over her fins as she hacked away, numb to the pain she was inflicting upon herself. Sobbing wildly, the flaming-haired mermaid finally paused, examined the dagger-sharp rock in her hand, its tip painted with her sticky, scintillating blood, and plunged it deep into her bare chest.

* * *

Fifty years passed before another soul entered the small coastal cave, and by that time Ginny's small corpse had been almost entirely erased by the continual ebb and flow of the unrelenting tide.

But then, one early autumn day, a young boy was exploring the pebbly beach. His name was Ernest, the eight-year-old great-grandson of Harry and Cho Potter. His messy black hair lifted slightly in the breeze as his sharp, dark eyes spotted the small crack between two tall, sawtoothed rocks; a crack just large enough from a slender person such as himself to slip through.

He hopped from his perch on the very same smooth grey rock his great-grandmother had once sat on to remove her sandals, half a century before, and began sloshing through the icy water towards the narrow crevice. To his boundless surprise, the crack between the two craggy rocks led not to a blank, stony cliff-face, but to a small dark grotto.

Ernest scrambled from the stream of salty water onto the slight incline of stones, covered with the innumerable flotsam and jetsam of thousands upon thousands of rising and falling waves.

Suddenly, something smooth and white caught his bright eyes, and he bent down. Lodged between two stones was a delicate, human-looking rib cage. Another, dagger-like shard of rock ran through the skeletal structure piercing the location just above the heart, and around the broken and bent remnants of a neck there rested a tarnished- but miraculously still intact- string of copper beads. There was no skull, no trace of the once-powerful tail, for all had been washed away many years past. Ernest made a small, frightened choking noise, and- like any child would- turned tail and ran from the place as fast as his short legs could carry him.

Moments before squeezing through the crack that led to the outside world, however, a sharp pain in his bare toe halted him. He stooped down, curiosity momentarily abating his panic. A glittering, jewel-bright fish scale, large enough to rest comfortably in the palm of his small hand. He turned the copper-colored object over, stuffed it in his jeans pocket, and slipped from the cave, blinking in the sudden light of the autumn sun.

By the time Ernest Potter had reached the front stoop of his great-grandparent's coastal cottage, his young mind had completely dismissed the pearly bones as nothing but a figment of his own, childish imagination.

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 _A/N: This was my first try at writing a Mermaid!AU, so please let me know how I did. A review would really mean the world to me. Have a great day, and check out some of my other Harry Potter fanfictions, if you have a moment!_


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